ABOUT 1500 A STIMULATING TIME. The latter part of the fifteenth century and the earlier part of the sixteenth was a stimulating period in the intellectual development of Christian Europe. The Turks had closed in on Constantinople (1453) and ended the Eastern Empire, and many Greek scholars had fled to the West. Though the Revival of Learning had culminated in Italy, its influence was still strongly felt in such cities as Florence and Venice, while in German lands and in England the reform movement awakened by it was at its height. Greek and Hebrew were now taught generally in the northern universities. Everywhere the old scholastic learning and methods were being overturned by the new humanism, and scholastic teachers were being displaced from their positions in the universities and schools. The new humanistic university at Wittenberg, founded in 1502, was exerting large influence among German scholars and attracting to it the brightest young minds in German lands. Erasmus was the greatest international scholar of the age, though ably seconded by distinguished humanistic scholars in Italy, France, England, the Low Countries, and German lands. The court schools of Italy (R. 135) and the municipal colleges of France (R. 136) were marking out new lines in the education of the select few. Colet was founding his reformed grammar school (1510) at Saint Paul's, in London (R. 138), the first of a long line of English humanistic grammar schools. Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michael Angelo were adding new fame to Italy, and carrying the Renaissance movement over into that art which the world has ever since treasured and admired.